Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Casewise from London and Scaling in the US

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Alexandre Wentzo is the former CEO of Casewise, an enterprise software company that started in London and scaled in the US. The company was self-financed and did $24 Million in revenue when we spoke in 2015. Our discussion focuses on some of the nuances of starting an enterprise software company in Europe and scaling it in the US. Casewise was sold to Erwin in 2016. You can also listen to our podcast interview here and watch the roundtable interview here:

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Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Prashant Kumar, CTO of Cardinality (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Do you operate as a product or a services company?

Prashant Kumar: We are primarily an ISV but we have a consulting part as well. We deliver use cases for the customers. 

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the Telefonica use case. It sounds like that is what you broke into the market with. What is that use case that you started with?

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Achieve3000 CEO Stuart Udell (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When the teacher is assigning this reading through your product, is the student doing that reading at home?

Stuart Udell: Before COVID, about 46% of our reading was done after school hours. Since COVID, that number jumped to the high 80s and even touched 90%. The nice thing is, there are lots of flexible models that can really work here. The student can read individually at home. Then the discussion can happen in the classroom the next day. The classroom can mean physical or remote. Then there are lots of teachers who will tell kids to silently read for 15 to 20 minutes and discuss in the classroom. It’s a very flexible implementation model.

Video FAQs

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Prashant Kumar, CTO of Cardinality (Part 1)

This is a deeply technical discussion about a specific layer of the technology stack where Data Engineering and other data related disciplines are handled.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Cardinality. 

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Achieve3000 CEO Stuart Udell (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to go in a bunch of different directions in the next part of the interview. One, let’s start with the product and the model of how students are using the product. What is the infrastructure? How are teachers engaging? How are parents engaging to come up with a good outcome?

Stuart Udell: Our flagship product is actually the name of the company – Achieve3000. It represents two-thirds of our revenue. What Achieve3000 Literacy does so exceptionally well is that it’s built to provide equity and access for kids. It does that by helping the teacher differentiate instruction in the classroom. That’s something that all teachers think about.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Meltwater to $200 Million

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Founder Jorn Lyseggen started Meltwater in Norway and, when we spoke in 2015, had scaled the company organically to $200 million. Fascinating journey!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances?

Jorn Lyseggen: I was actually born in Korea. I came to Norway as a very small child. I was three years old. I actually grew up in a little farm in the middle of a deep, dark forest in Norway. You drive for hours into the deep, dark forest and then suddenly, there’s a small opening. Then, you come to a little village with 168 families. One of those families is mine.

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Homeroots CEO Gil Bar-Lev (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You operated in a zero-logistics mode with domestic manufacturers. Since 2018, how long did you operate in that mode before introducing the logistics operation?

Gil Bar-Lev: We started the logistics operation in the last quarter of 2020. We started with just one warehouse in California. Then we expanded and now have two. We’re working on a partnership with UPS. Through that, we’ll be able to launch multiple warehouses across the nation.

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Achieve3000 CEO Stuart Udell (Part 1)

McGraw Hill has just acquired Achieve3000. Stuart is an EdTech veteran who discusses the pre-K-12 literacy gap, personalized learning, as well as open opportunities in B-to-C education models driven by Covid.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about your own background and introduce us to the company. Let’s get acquainted.